Lando - Our heroic Catholic magician. He is so tough that he can b***h-slap a cobra, then tie it into a knot with his bare hands. I bet that he is really Saint Patrick reincarnated.

Laura, Lenorah, or something like that - Lando's wife. In the span of just a few days her son is shot to death, her daughter almost marries a fallen angel, and her husband suffers an apparently fatal gunshot wound to the head. Oh, and a random guy punches her in the mouth. This woman, whatever her name may be, needs to spend a lot more time praying.

Becky - Lando's daughter. She spends half of the film locked in an inescapable cage that is filled with naked women. You know that whole thing about "Would you take his place on the cross?" I would take Becky's place in that cage. I'm that kind of Christian.

Luisa - She is good until two Satanists suck on her neck, then she turns evil. She explodes for no discernable reason.

Renzo - He is the second most powerful Catholic in the village until Luisa tears half of his face off.

The Prince of Magic - The most powerful of Satan's servants, and he has the outfit to prove it.

Satan - He always appears in one of two distinct forms. The first is a gaunt male metrosexual fashion model, while the second looks like a cheap magician.

The Plot:

My friends, this is a Filipino film about a man who uses Catholic magic to battle Satan. That alone makes seeking it out a worthwhile effort for anyone who enjoys bizarre cinema. Movies from the Philippines (and Indonesia, and India, and Iran) are weird. Having been born and raised in the United States, I find that science fiction, fantasy, and horror films made in the Philippines boggle me. Sometimes they almost make sense, until they suddenly don't. I often wonder if, were I Filipino, Satan's wizard shooting red laser beams that cause people's heads to spin would make perfect sense.

What really worries me is that I've seen so many bad movies that Satan's spinning head lasers almost make sense anyway.

Another great thing about "The Killing of Satan" is the cover art. It reminds me of so many Commodore 64 games, because there is no way the movie can deliver what the artwork is promising. Does anyone remember "Questron" for the Commodore 64? The artwork depicts a heroic warrior riding an eagle attacking a huge evil face hanging in the sky. Playing the game, the graphics are a bit different. You are a human stick figure. Suddenly your stick figure encounters a Bloodhound Ghoul. A Bloodhound Ghoul! It sounds positively terrifying, doesn't it? It's a stick figure of a dog which is scary because it's purple. Fighting the Bloodhound Ghoul is even more exciting. Your stick figure flickers, the computer bleeps, the stick dog flickers, the computer bleeps; after five or six repetitions, the dog disappears.

In case you are wondering, "Questron" is my favorite game from the golden age of the C64. Seriously.

Back to the movie!

Uncle Miguel and the other Catholic wizards are practicing their faith and magic when Satan's thugs appear. The Prince of Magic challenges Uncle Miguel to a contest, with the winner getting bragging rights. Faced with the religious equivalent of a triple dog dare, the Catholics put up a good fight, but the Satanists are too powerful. The person who gets the worst of it is poor Uncle Miguel, whose head starts spinning so fast that it can travel back in time.

Time...time...time...time...time...

Elsewhere, Lando is trying to get his life back together after spending quite a few years in prison for killing a man in self defense. Unfortunately, one of the dead man's relatives cannot let bygones be bygones; he rounds up some other men and starts shooting at Lando's house. When the smoke clears, all of the attackers are dead, but so is Lando (the result of a large bullet hole in his forehead).

Back at the village, Uncle Miguel lays dying from Satan's Spinning Head Syndrome. Knowing that he is a goner, and that Lando is the only person who can save the village from the Prince of Magic, Miguel trades existential places with his distant nephew. The old man develops a bullet hole in his forehead, while Lando causes a lot of fright by waking up in the middle of his own wake. After scaring the hell out of his wife, Lando decides it might be a good time to visit his Uncle Miguel.

I wonder if Lando's village is named Bethany.

One of the first things that Lando finds out when he returns to his childhood home is that Uncle Miguel has died, and that his body was cremated at sea. Feeling the need to say goodbye, Lando boards a small outrigger and motors away from the beach. Before he can even pop the top off of a forty, Uncle Miguel's burnt corpse pops out of the water. The old man gives Lando some advice before sinking back into the ocean. I am not certain how much of the advice Lando actually remembers afterwards, because being hugged by your deep-fried uncle's corpse does screw with your long-term memory, but I guess that any advice bestowed by a dead relative is likely to be distressing. Take a look at Hamlet. Talking to his dead father was not terribly good for his sanity, either.

While Lando is talking to the Ghost of Chicken Fried Uncles Past, the Satanists are roughing up the villagers. The poor Catholics are no match for the Prince of Magic's powers. Heck, they are not even a match for the lesser Satanists who use red radar waves to freeze them (I never realized that religion could be so exciting). Anyway, the men who try to stop the evil-doers get beat up, and Becky is taken away to become one of Satan's many wives.

Lando and Renzo immediately go after the kidnappers. They enter the cave of the Prince of Magic, where they encounter snakes, Satanists, and retired members of the Filipino Chippendales; all of which attack the righteous pair. The snakes are not much of a problem for Lando; he just ties them into knots before disdainfully tossing them aside. Likewise, the Satanists are little more than cheap fodder. The retired Filipino Chippendales, however, do turn out to be a problem. Imagine being attacked by a scrawny old man whose fighting style seems to be jumping on top of people and then trying to dance them to death. Doesn't seem like a lot of fun, does it? Lando doesn't think so either.

The foray into Satan's domain ends badly for Renzo. He rescues Luisa from the underground bordello, but he is too late to save her soul. She is already a concubine of the unclean one's followers. Renzo finds that out the hard way when she tears half of his face off. Lando does not make out much better. He cannot open the cage to save Becky, and challenging the Prince of Magic gets him punked pretty badly. The Prince of Magic just laughs at the indignant father, hits him with a dizzy izzy spell, and then laughs some more. Incapacitated by the unholy spinning, Lando is helpless; the Prince of Magic's backup minions throw him into a lake.

That's what I call getting punked.

A young boy who does not talk finds Lando and brings the shamed Catholic to a vine-covered church in the middle of the jungle. There the boy's grandfather gives Lando a gift that will help him to defeat Satan and his minions. The gift is a stick. The young boy is supposed to be Jesus, and the old man is the Almighty himself. God seems to think that most human problems can be solved with a stick. Have you ever had the feeling that your parents, especially your father, don't understand you? That's my relationship with God. Lando seems to be in the same boat.

In God's defense, the magic stick trick worked pretty well for that Moses fellow. However, what Moses needed was a magic stick and a map.

What's a map? Maps are those things that everybody used to use to find their way from Point A to Point B before GPS came along. I still use them. I don't have a GPS; I don't even have an iPhone with a GPS app. I have maps. Yes, I'm older than you. Turn down that awful music and get off of my lawn. Hooligan.

Equipped with his Staff of Mighty Catholicism, Lando is nearly invulnerable. He kicks the butt of every Satanist in the cave, including the Prince of Magic. Satan refuses to accept defeat; he runs off with Becky to make her his unwilling bride. Casting about the hills near the cave, Lando locates a red rock that signals he is near Satan's domain. Then the heroic Catholic father issues his challenge to the Prince of Evil. Satan gladly accepts. The battle between the opposing powers seems to go on forever, though Lando gets the worst of it for most of the fight. He is repeatedly thrown to the ground, and the hillside is covered with large, uncomfortable-looking rocks. "Oh! Satan is kicking my Catholic a** all over this hill! Sonofab***h, I just fell on another rock!"

Catholicism is not for the weak of heart or frail of bone. If you want to beat Satan like Mr. Lando does, you had best drink lots of milk.

Things I Learned From This Movie:

Being a devout Christian is a whole lot easier where there aren't any mountains.

Prayer is no substitute for a telephone.

Cremation does weird stuff to your ghost.

Remember, always interrogate them, then choke them to death.

Lassie is easier to understand than Jesus.

Jesus' real name is Niño.

The great thing about decorating a bamboo hut is that anything is an improvement.

I am not sure which I love more, this movie or your lovely shoutout to Questron, also one of my favorite RPGs of the Commodore 64/8-bit computer era. I still think it had one of the most satisfying conclusions of any RPG even with all of today's cinematics. However it gets beat out by it's un-official sequel, Legacy of the Ancients imo. That and Alternate Reality. /sigh......

Anyway, yes great absurd over the top movie. One of my favorites. The spell from the Prince of Magic is right up there with some of Old Ancestor's high-priest's wierd-ass spells from The Seventh Curse. I REALLY hope you've reviewed that on your site, if not I've got a DivX to send you sir...